The standard relationship between Internet Service Provider and customer is typified by high costs, hidden charges and opaque business practices. Huge telecommunication firms enjoy a veritable monopoly on the internet, cooperating with each other as a cartel, to ensure uniformity with regards to consumers’ low expectations.

Even more dangerous are the vast sums of dark money these firms pump into lobbying campaigns designed to attack the open nature of the internet. The ethic of net neutrality has been under attack for years, in an attempt to throttle internet access for small consumers and websites while providing top-tier representation for billion-dollar enterprises.

The Milwaukee Mesh Cooperative is part of a growing movement towards community ownership of the internet we all use on a daily basis. We believe the internet should be fast, affordable, net neutral and democratically operated.

A member of the cooperative will be a worker-owner or a consumer-owner. Owners work together to ensure the direction and operation of the cooperative are in keeping with our mission, through directly democracy processes.

Some hidden board does not dictate policy. Faceless shareholders don’t dictate policy. We do.